A third potential case had come from an acquaintance of my great-aunt, Lady Eugenia Davenport, a most dire situation. Little Bitsy had gone missing.
Bitsy? I didn’t ask.
“She provided his jumper along with his favorite toys when I met with her,” Brodie had exclaimed the previous evening. “Along with the last meal on the finest bone china before he disappeared.”
He was quite beside himself, and only another dram of whisky eventually smoothed the edges of that temper. Somewhat.
“A dog!” he had then exclaimed. “A black pug, that eats off of fine dishes and has his own servant. The woman talks on and on about the animal as if it’s a child.”
“I would imagine that she’s quite lonely, since Sir Lionel’s death,” I ventured in an attempt to soothe the raging beast.
“It’s verra possible she talked him to death.”
“What of the man with the much younger wife. A few years younger? And there is difficulty between them?”
“He’s over seventy, and she is quite a bit younger.” he replied. “It seems that the woman married him for his money, and the affair is not the first. Hers, that is. Apparently, the list is long.”
“Oh my,” I replied.
“I suppose ye have no objections to such things, with yer modern woman’s ways.”
I did sense a bit of temper.
“It would be interesting to know how the husband might have carried on in his younger years,” I pointed out, merely for the sake of argument, which brought a glare.
“Ye approve such behavior?”
“I’m merely pointing out that in this case, what’s good for the gander is good for the goose.”
“What the devil is that supposed to mean?”
I was very possibly poking the bear, but he was so very attractive when he was glaring at me.
“The usual saying is, ‘What is good for the goose is good for the gander.’ However, this is a bit turned around. It does seem that perhaps he has gotten some of his own, and the shoe does not fit particularly well. You might remember that.”
“She warned me.”
“Warned?” I replied. “About what?”
“Her ladyship warned me that ye can have a quarrelsome spirit and an odd way of looking at things.”
So, my great-aunt had a hand in this.
“Not at all,” I replied. I have simply come to believe that what is acceptable for a man, should also be acceptable for a woman—travel, their own money so that they don’t have to go begging to their husband, and the vote.”
“Vote?”
“I consider myself as well informed on any of the issues confronting Britain as any man, more so than many,” I pointed out.
“Her ladyship and yerself are the exceptions,” he replied. “Ye do not take yerself off worrying whether or not Bitsy has a jumper to wear when it gets cold.”
I did suppose that was a compliment. While I was contemplating that he was plotting his escape from the conversation at hand.
“Is that Mrs. Ryan’s fine cooking I smell?” he asked.
I let him escape for the time being.
Her roast chicken had ‘soothed the beast’ somewhat, as they say, and we had retired afterward to the parlor, where we shared a dram of whisky.
